Tag: Holder

How El Chapo Got His Gun

by Marshall Lewin – Thursday, February 4, 2016

Photo credit: El Chapo photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images

You’ve probably heard the news that when Mexican authorities raided the hideout of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the head of the murderous Sinaloa drug cartel, on Jan. 8, they recovered a .50-caliber Barrett rifle that was trafficked through the ATF’s disastrous “Fast and Furious” debacle.

What you may not know, but probably suspected, is that the more information that surfaces surrounding Fast and Furious, the more it appears that the Obama administration deliberately helped traffic guns from the United States to the highest levels of the most ruthless and deadly drug cartels in Mexico for no other reason than to support the absurd claim—asserted by everyone from Barack Obama to his attorney general, Eric Holder, to his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton—that 90 percent of the guns used in crimes in Mexico originated in the U.S., and that imposing more gun control upon law-abiding Americans would somehow control international criminal networks with billions of dollars at their fingertips.

When you look at the evidence in aggregate, no other explanation seems possible, let alone plausible.

There’s a saying: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.” One gun slipping across the border can be explained by stupidity. Two can be explained that way. Perhaps even 100 can be. But thousands? But at some point, even the dullest BATFE agent will come to realize that it’s not possible to track a gun after it’s been smuggled across an international border. Thus stupidity does not and cannot explain the government’s actions. Only malice can.

Like this:

The deadliest Obama scandal, Operation Fast and Furious, has been simmering for months now. Congressman Darrell Issa’s investigation has been getting stonewalled by the Administration and former AG Eric Holder, who oversaw the program, has since returned to life as a Beltway Bandit. But the arrest of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman threatens to move the scandal off of the back burner.

When Mexican Marines caught up to Guzman (Tacos and Sean Penn were involved. I’m not making this up!), they recovered a .50 BMG rifle at the house where he was hiding. Wanna take a guess where this particular rifle came from? You got it; Operation Fast and Furious. This was one of at least 34 .50 BMG firearms that the BATFE allowed to “walk” into Mexico. For those who don’t remember, this operation was supposed to catch gun runners taking guns into Mexico. There was, however, one problem: BATFE agents had no way of tracking the guns once they crossed the border. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them that the other side of the border is Mexico, and not the US, and that their jurisdiction ends at said border.

That theory, as attractive as it sounds, isn’t plausible. How do we know this? The agents involved are able to dress themselves. Were they really that stupid, they’d be showing up to work wearing Garanimals. Which means, of course, that their actions were deliberate.

So why would the Obama Administration allow firearms like this .50 BMG rifle to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels? The theory I find more believable is that they were ginning up the “iron river of guns” that Hillary and others have been babbling about for years. Robert Farago at The Truth About Guns thinks that this particular seizure adds credence to an alternative theory: That the US was arming the Sinaloa cartel in their fight against the Los Zetas cartel. In either case, US officials didn’t seem to care that these same rifles were being turned on Mexican law enforcement. There are reports that the Sinaloa cartel was using them against drug surveillance helicopters piloted by Mexican police. Perhaps both theories explain the Administration’s actions. One motivation may have conveniently grown from the other.

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AWR Hawkins reports at Breitbart that the US Department of Agriculture has issued a solicitation for submachine guns chambered in .40 S&W. Is this the latest sign of a government gone rogue, arming for a fight against its own people? Not really.

The solicitation reads in part…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, located in Washington, DC, pursuant to the authority of FAR Part 13, has a requirement for the commerical [sic] acquisition of submachine guns, .40 Cal. S&W, ambidextrous safety, semi-automatic or 2 shot burts trigger group, Tritium night sights for front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore grip) and scope (top rear), stock-collapsilbe [sic] or folding, magazine – 30 rd. capacity, sling, light weight, and oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.

Those of us who hunt public land will easily recall that the National Forests we hunt are administered by the US Forest Service, an agency of the USDA. We also know that there are some parts of the forest where one needs to tread lightly; and I don’t mean in a “be careful not to step on a flower” or a “keep and eye out for Yogi and Boo-Boo” kinda way. In those parts of the forest, it’s booby traps you’re looking out for.

Since Obama’s Consigliere General Eric Holder decide that arming Mexican drug cartels sounded like a great idea, our national forests have become a little sketchy in some places. And while hunters have a choice about what parts of the forest they’ll visit, forest rangers don’t. The poor schmucks have to go into what the rest of us would call no-go zones. And if a ranger wishes to avoid getting the Brian Terry treatment from Obama’s narcoterroristas, he or she had better be packing some serious heat.

So no, it’s not outrageous that the USDA would want submachine guns like the ones the solicitation calls for. Mr. Ranger probably loves his job, but that doesn’t mean he wants to die while doing it.

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As if it wasn’t bad enough that we have to endure anti-self defense propaganda from Obama’s consigliere, now comes John McCain saying “‘stand your ground’ rules need a second look”. What was stupid and bigoted coming out of Eric Holder’s mouth is just as stupid and bigoted coming out of McCain’s.

“The attorney general fails to understand that self-defense is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right,” he said in a statement. “To send a message that legitimate self-defense is to blame is unconscionable, and demonstrates once again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.”

The Attorney General would better serve the People if he spent a little more of his time telling his underlings to stop shipping arms to Mexican drug cartels. It’s just a thought.

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To be fair, perhaps he really means that Eric Holder imported far more guns to Mexico that anyone imagined.

The President, travelling in Mexico, made the false claim that the majority of illegal guns used in crimes in that country come from the US. Even the Daily Mail couldn’t help but notice that the President failed to mention his Fast and Furious operation that funnelled thousands of illegal guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Like this:

At times it seems like ours is a world that’s ever in turmoil. Everything seems like it’s in some state of upheaval. There are, however, some things in this world that are reliable constants; like the Washington Post shilling for the extreme, anti-gun Left. This op-ed piece, Lax U.S. gun laws enable killing in Mexico, is the latest example of the “stability” of the Post.

If we are to believe the Post’s editorial board, the lessons we should take away from the whole Fast and Furious scandal are…

80% of all illegal guns in Mexico still come from the US

Fast and Furious was well intentioned

It’s really George Bush’s fault

Of course, as has been explained before, the 80% Myth (Formerly known as the 90% Myth) is simply false. The Mexican government is downright sloppy when it comes to their gun trace requests to the BATFE and their own record keeping. They’re just plain corrupt about inventory control at armories and evidence lockers.

And was Fast and Furious really “well intentioned”? Increasingly, it looks like the sole purpose to the operation was to gin-up a reason for more domestic gun control laws. How well intentioned could a government be that conspires to manipulate the media in an attempt to rob the People of their liberties? (And let’s be honest, with media like WaPo around, why all the silly cloak-and-dagger nonsense? Our “free press” will happily bend over and print whatever anti-gun propaganda the Obama administration asks them to!)

And for the record, the forerunner to Fast and Furious was “Operation gunrunner”; a Bush-era program that actually stopped illegal guns before they crossed the border into Mexico. But stopping illegal guns isn’t as useful for writing new gun laws as is letting them into the hands of narco-terrorists. For that little ruse, the Obama program Fast and Furious was created. And if this really was all Bush’s fault, why is Obama’s Attorney General engaged in a cover up? Why would Eric Holder protect the Bushies?

Like this:

The government-sanctioned gunrunning operation, Fast and Furious, was a plot to undermine Second Amendment rights in the United States, National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre charged on Friday in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.

“It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” LaPierre said. “Over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth. At the same time they were yelling ’90 per cent… of the guns the Mexican drug cartels are using come from the United States.’

Story continues below video.

Attorney General Eric Holder should resign and a special prosecutor should investigate the deadly Fast and Furious scandal, says Wayne LaPierre. In this Newsmax.TV video, the NRA head says the administration needs to be held responsible for what he calls this rotten, stinking scheme.

“That was a phony figure from the very start. Even the Wikileaks cables from our own State Department prove they are coming from Central America, they are not coming from the U.S. Every police officer will tell you that they’re coming from Russia, they’re coming from China, most of them are coming from Central America and a lot of them are coming from defections from the Mexican Army.”

But LaPierre said that President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were determined to make it appear that most weapons used by the Mexicans came from north of the border, “so they could stick more gun legislation on honest American gun owners of the United States.”